History VideoGame / ZeusMasterOfOlympus

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: Given how clunky combat is both in manual and automatic mode (not to mention the disruption to your economy), it's much simpler to simply bribe enemies on your doorstep to go away.

* DemotedToExtra: Oedipus appears in the Thebes campaign... as your deputy, running Thebes while you're out founding colonies. His major achievement (killing the Sphinx) is given to Atalanta in the sequel.
* DeusExMachina: The actor walker is probably meant to invoke this (as an actual ancient theater trope), wearing a winged costume and being seen caught in the machine that descends him from heaven. He fervently wishes for this trope when near a monster, .

* HealerGod: Worshipping Apollo helps prevent plague, but if he's hostile he'll send a plague and curse your infirmaries.

* HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: Averted with Ares, Theseus, Achilles, Hector and hoplites, who always keep their face-concealing helmets on. Athena wears one, that doesn't hide her face.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: In basically every version of ''[[Literature/TheIliad The Iliad]]'' ever, Hector is portrayed as an honorable warrior who serves his city with valor. In ''Zeus'' and ''Poseidon'', Hector is a bloodthirsty demigod who wrecks everyone and everything unfortunate enough to cross his path.

** Can be averted with a fully-completed (and very expensive) sanctuary for Zeus. Zeus will chase off any attacking god.

* MsFanservice: Goddesses, especially Aphrodite, tend to be very attractive.

* OddJobGods: Some gods' blessings are related to their lesser-known domains. For example, Poseidon blesses maritime industries, but also makes horses be produced faster (since he created horses), while Hades makes silver mines more productive (everything from underground belongs to him).

* SequelDifficultyDrop: ''Zeus'' is considerably easier and way more forgiving than ''Caesar III'' and ''Pharaoh''; buildings are automatically staffed, as there are no labor-seeking walkers anymore. A single building provides maintenance and fires can be put out before the building is consumed. There is only one single type of food required for requests and fewer types of goods and services required to fully evolve houses, and no complex land fertility system. Taxation can be implemented from the start, as unlike in Pharaoh, the infrastructure to set it up is quite cheap. Wages can quickly lower or raise the labor pool. There is no rating system, no gods to appease by default (the hostile ones can still damage the city), and no painfully slow recruitment system, as the basic housing provides weak but free and numerous soldiers from the start to defend the city, with elite housing providing strong soldiers and cavalry. Invasions are not always inherently deadly, as the enemy can be bribed off or the city can lose/surrender once and become a vassal, even to several cities. Everything is cheaper, and fortifications are no longer prohibitively expensive. In campaign mode, all the treasury is carried over from one mission to the next, which usually translates to only the first episode being a financial challenge.

** Top-level residents have access to theater, philosophy, and personal trainers, in addition to serving as hoplites or cavalry. Atlanteans have science instead, and serve as spearmen or charioteers.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: Sanctuaries can be targeted and damaged in combat, but fortunately they can be repaired as if undergoing construction.

** Apollo is the god of arts and healing, who wanders the city blessing cultural buildings so they produce more walkers and perform better. [[OneManArmy He also singlehandedly defends the city from invading monsters]], and if you piss him off he'll unleash plagues on your city.

* FetchQuest: Many heroic deeds involve you attracting the appropriate hero to the city so they can go on a quest to get some item or other.

** Gods cannot be beaten by anything other than a stronger god (except, sometimes, Orichalcum-powered towers).

** If your athletes didn't get first at the Nemean/Olympic games, they'll claim the sun was in their eyes or that the jury was rigged.

* MamasBabyPapasMaybe: Hephaestus doesn't figure out Harmonia is the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite until twenty years or so after his wife went off to a beauty spa for nine months. When he des, he attacks the city.

** In ''Poseidon'', centaurs are apparently a civilized race, responding with complete politeness when defeated.
** There are two entities named Atlas in Myth/GreekMythology: the Titan (son of Gaia and Ouranos) holding up the sky and the first king of Atlantis (son of Poseidon). [[CompositeCharacter The game conflates the two after the latter ascends to Olympus.]]

* UnblockableAttack: Gods and monsters can't be prevented from rampaging around without a stronger god/hero/sacrificial troops. Ares and Artemis' troops can be engaged as normal, however.

*** Similarly, one level has Athena claim the Hydra was Ares's pet, when normally she's the one sending it.

** An InUniverse case during the Odyssey campaign, where the suitors figured out Penelope wasn't making any progress on her tapestry because their gifts of fleece kept getting refused.

* DeathOrGloryAttack: It's possible to have your city's troops consist entirely of infantry and cavalry (meaning no rabble/archers). Sending them all against your enemies has a higher chance of success, but it means [[FairWeatherFriend other cities]] instantly attack you due to having no troops to defend.

* GodhoodSeeker: ''Poseidon''[='=]s first campaign has king Atlas, a son of Poseidon, visit Olympus and eventually beg to live there. By the end of the campaign, he's ascended among the Olympians, and shows up in later campaigns as a worshipable god who helps out with monument building.

** The (male) narrator, when reporting what various goddesses have to say, falls into this. During the Trojan War campaign, he accidentally uses [[DrillSergeantNasty the Spartan narrator's voice]] for Aphrodite before correcting himself.

* OddballInTheSeries: The tone and artwork are notably more [[LighterAndSofter cartoonish]] than in the rest of the series, with the narration, events and exposition usually relying on sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek humor. Also, unlike the other games, ''Zeus'' doesn't use the name of a political, human leader (since Ancient Greece wasn't a unified entity) in the title, but goes with a mythological one instead. Several key mechanics are notably simplified, some of which get reverted in ''Emperor''.
* OddJobGods: Some gods' blessings are related to their lesser-known domains. For example, Poseidon blesses maritime industries, but also makes horses be produced faster, while Hades makes silver mines more productive.

** Scylla is depicted with a similar structure (but with human heads on snake necks, and it's aquatic), and the intro cinematic shows Typhon as having multiple snake heads as well before being buried under a mountain.

** The actor school's line "Build me a pyre to roast my friends upon" is almost a literal quotation from ''Theatre/{{Lysistrata}}'', as is "For Athens' sake I will never threaten so fell a doom" and "If only they had been invited to a bacchanalian reveling, or a feast of Pan or Aphrodite!" (and is indeed one of the women's lines, being spoken by Lysistrata herself).

--> Ssssuffer my sssstingsss! / Our ssstinging bitessss, are our giftsss to you!
* SmallNameBigEgo: The actor walker refers to himself as the finest actor in all of Greece. When returning from unsuccessful games, he wonders if the audience are becoming barbarians.

* SupportPartyMember: Building Atlas' sanctuary first greatly speeds up construction of other monuments.

* HandicappedBadass: Hephaestus is seen walking with a limp. Doesn't prevent him from rampaging around the city breaking storage yards.
--> A lame immortal still has more power than you can imagine!

** Building Artemis' temple gives you two companies of huntresses for free. [[NonIndicativeName While they can't be used for hunting]], they can be used to aid in defending the city, conquering rival cities or answering a rival's request for troops without risking your own expensive troops.

** Heroes have very heavy requirements (such as 32 of a resource, large armies, or even a functioning sanctuary or two) before you can summon them. Fortunately, monsters can eventually be killed by regular troops or, more rarely, by an outmatched hero. In addition, Apollo will single-handedly defend the city from monsters if you build a sanctuary to him (and is the only god to do so, as the other gods consider battling monsters beneath them).

** The gods are arranged in order of strength, with Zeus naturally being at the top. However, he's not entirely invulnerable, as having Hera (the 4th strongest) around will cause him to flee.

--> Mommy Echidna and Daddy Typhon will be so proud of their little girl when I destroy this city!

* EarlyGameHell: The first level of a campaign greatly limits the buildings you can place, and on occasion oesn't even give you the means to make money, turning the whole thing into a TimedMission until your funds run out.

** Can be averted with a fully-completed (and very expensive) sanctuary for Zeus. Zeus will chase off any attacking god (with the exception of Hera in the Atlantis expansion).

* HopelessBossFight: If you're not supposed to conquer a city before the game says so, it will resist every attempt made to conquer it although its strength will be reduced, so the only way to tell is to see a one-shield city defeating eight chariot companies, five triremes, three heroes and a WarGod.

** Summoning a hero only works once per level, if you finish the mission you'll have to wait for the hero's presence to be required again.

** Inverted with bribing armies. This is much faster than actually fighting, which cuts into your manpower, slowing down production for months, and frees you from having to maintain expensive troops. That said, if you maintain zero troops whatsoever other cities will happily attack you.

''Zeus: Master of Olympus'' (2000) is part of the ''VideoGame/CityBuildingSeries'' taking place, as the name suggests, in AncientGreece. Players seek to build up their city-states while fending off attacks from rival cities, ferocious monsters, and even gods while calling on the greatest heroes of Myth/GreekMythology to help them.

** Sanctuaries are high-appeal buildings that provide divine favor and can provide you with otherwise-difficult to obtain resources. Unfortunately, they're also ''huge'', take a lot of time, marble, wood and sculptures to build, need a lot of workers, and if your city produces fleece, cheese or cattle, will require constant monitoring and replenishing of your flocks as priests take animals for sacrifice.

** Heroes have very heavy requirements (such as 32 of a resource, large armies, or even a functioning sanctuary or two) before you can summon them. Fortunately, monsters can eventually be killed by regular troops or, more rarely, by an outmatched hero.

* ArrowsOnFire: In ''Poseidon: Master of Atlantis'', upgrading the defensive towers with Main/Orichalcum results in this.

** Poseidon sends {{Kraken}}.

** Achilles (the youngest of the heroes in the Literature/TrojanWar) and Ulysses appear during the founding of Atlantis and several generations later, despite Troy being founded by Atlantean refugees in the game's chronology.

** Atalanta, who singlehandedly takes on giant monsters.

* AreYouSureYouWantToDoThat: Every level in the minicampaign "The Sinking of Atlantis" will tell you that, well, Atlantis is going to sink, and are you sure you want to proceed to the next level?

* AtlantisIsBoring: Mostly averted, though it's telling that Greek cultural interests (sports, philosophy and theater) are replaced by learning, scientific conferences and astronomy.
* TheAtoner: The Atlanteans react with horror at having destroyed the Atlantean centaurs, which they saw as AlwaysChaoticEvil barbarians, when they had fine cities of their own including shrines to Poseidon, their own patron god. The Atlanteans swear to never attack except in self-defense afterwards ([[spoiler:as they continue to expand eastwards and westwards, you're eventually told this only applies to people on the actual continent of Atlantis]]).

** A hippodrome more than 200 stades long brings in 500 drachma a ''month'', but aside from being a pathing nightmare also causes your citizens to dislike you as you're evidently more obsessed with the races than their well-being.
** Heroes have very heavy requirements (such as 32 of a resource, large armies, or even a functioning sanctuary or two) before you can summon them. Fortunately, monsters can eventually be killed by regular troops or rarely by an outmatched hero.

* CessationOfExistence: Cities are sometimes wiped off the map with the message "It is as if it had never existed".

* CurbstompBattle: Sometimes a summmoned hero will run into his monster before he's made it to his hall. The monster dies instantly (as opposed to the three or four hits it normally takes without being able to harm the hero).

* CreatorBacklash: InUniverse example, one of the enemy gods in the minicampaign "The Sinking of Atlantis" is Atlas himself.

* EverybodyHatesHades: Subverted: Hades is one of the more useful gods, being present as lord of the Underworld and all the silver inside it. His temple creates veins of silver ore, he wanders around the city making tax collectors produce double (gives new meaning to the saying "Death and taxes", doesn't it?), praying to him gets you even more money, and his HellHound goes around eating troublemakers. Conversely, when pissed off he sends Cerberus at you or curses those same buildings, and worst of all, kills a large amount of walkers just by showing up.

** Oceanid trade ships are no different from humans', despite the cities being underwater and their species being amphibious. The postgame exposition claims they do this to avoid freaking people out and make trading easier.

*** Similarly, one level has Athena claim the Hydra was Ares' pet, when normally she's the one sending it.

* GodsNeedPrayerBadly: The gods wander around your city advertizing their services to encourage you to build an expensive sanctuary to them. Naturally, there're more gods than available sanctuaries, so the unlucky ones get ever more desperate in their efforts.

* GrandpaGod: The Big Three, naturally. And taken literally in ''Poseidon'''s Atlantis campaign, as he's the father of Atlas, himself the father of the player character.

* SequelDifficultyDrop: ''Zeus'' is considerably easier and way more forgiving than ''Caesar III'' and ''Pharaoh''; buildings are automatically staffed, as there are no labor-seeking walkers anymore. A single building provides maintenance and fires can be put out before the building is consumed. There is only one single type of food required for requests and fewer types of goods and services required to fully evolve houses, and no complex land fertility system. Taxation can be implemented from the start, as unlike in Pharaoh, the infrastructure to set it up is quite cheap. Wages can quickly lower or raise the labor pool. There is no rating system, no gods to appease by default (the hostile ones can still damage the city), and no painfully slow recruitment system, as the basic housing provides weak but free and numerous soldiers from the start to defend the city, with elite housing providing strong soldiers and cavalry. Invasions are not always inherently deadly, as the enemy can be bribed off or the city can lose/surrender once and become a vassal, even to several cities. Everything is cheaper, and fortifications are no longer prohibitibely expensive. In campaign mode, all the treasury is carried over from one mission to the next, which usually translates to only the first episode being a financial challenge.

** The actor school's line "Build me a pyre to roast my friends upon" is almost a literal quotation from ''Theatre/{{Lysistrata}}'', as is "For Athens' sake I will never threaten so fell a doom" and "if only they had been invited to a bacchic reveling, or a feast of Pan or Aphrodite!" (and is indeed one of the womens' lines, being spoken by Lysistrata herself).

* SuperStrength: One of Hercules' quests in ''Poseidon'' is to widen the strait that connects the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Atlas himself perfoms a similar feat after tricking Hercules into holding up the sky for a while.

* TheStarscream: Miss a deadline by a parent city and your eputy tells he he's starting to think he might be better at running a city than you.

* WackyFratboyHijinks: The College (which trains philosophers) prominently features a guy getting drunk, while the University (astronomers and curators) has two guys endlessly repeating the "Thank you sir, may I have another" scene from Film/AnimalHouse.

* YourSizeMayVary: Sculptures are taller than most buildings when in storage and in temples, but shrink to human-size while transported.

* Narcissist: Aphrodite's blessing instantly creates people (if there's housing left over)... so she can have more worshippers.
* Narm: {{Invoked}} One outcome for the Pythian games is for your actors to reduce the crowd to tears. Unfortunately, they were performing a comedy.

* OddJobGods: Some gods' blessingsare related to their lesser-known proclivities. For example, Poseidon blesses maritime industries, but also makes horses be produced faster, while Hades makes silver mines more productive.

** Achilles (the youngest of the heroes in the Literature/TrojanWar) during the founding of Atlantis, despite Troy being founded by Atlantean refugees in the game's chronology.

* AlternateHistory: Thanks to an inhabited continent in the middle of the Atlantic, the Americans are discovered centuries before schedule, making Mayans and Phoenicians trading partners.
** The Greco-Persian wars end with Persia subjugated and turned into a vassal state.

* {{Atlantis}}: Here, it's a respectably-sized continent right in the middle of the Atlantic, close enough to both continents that it allows trade between the Mayans and the Phoenicians. ''Poseidon's'' first campaign has you build it from the ground up, while two campaigns end with its destruction (one of them firsthand).

* CulturedBadass: Top-level residents have access to theater, philosophy, and personal trainers, in addition to serving as hoplites or cavalry. Atlanteans have science instead, and serve as spearmen or charioteers.